Answering Enquiries at Twice the Volume

Whole templates are the wrong unit

The instinct is to write five complete replies and send whichever fits.

That produces messages that are almost right, which reads worse than a short original, because the customer notices the parts that do not apply to them.

The better unit is the paragraph: a stored answer to one question, which you assemble with two or three others into a reply.

That way every message is composed for the person and none of it is typed from scratch.

What belongs in the library

• The cutoff dates paragraph.
• The delivery timings paragraph.
• The out-of-stock answer.
• The returns policy, in two lines.
• The gift card alternative.
• The we-will-check holding reply.

Six paragraphs will cover most of what December asks of you. Each one is written carefully once, when you have time, rather than badly forty times when you do not.

Change one line every time

Which is what keeps it human.

Open with something specific to their message: name the product they asked about, refer to the town they mentioned, or acknowledge the thing they are worried about.

One sentence of that at the top makes three stored paragraphs beneath read as a considered reply.

Without it, the same paragraphs read as a form response and get treated as one.

That single line is the entire difference and it takes eight seconds.

Never send only stored text, however well it answers the question.

A worked example

A shop was spending three hours a day on messages in December.

They wrote seven paragraphs in one sitting: cutoffs, delivery, stock, returns, gift cards, a holding reply, and a closing line.

Replies dropped to about an hour a day, and the owner's assessment was that the quality went up rather than down, because the stored paragraphs were better written than anything typed in a hurry.

The one rule was that every reply opened with a line written for that person.

Two customers mentioned how helpful the replies were, which had never happened when they were being typed individually.

Careful writing reused had beaten hurried writing composed fresh every time.

Where to keep them

Which decides whether they get used.

A plain text file open in a second window works and is the version most people actually maintain.

Most email clients and help desks have a snippet or canned response feature that inserts by shortcut, which is faster and worth ten minutes to set up.

Whichever you choose, it has to be reachable in two seconds, or under pressure people type from scratch instead.

Share it with anybody else answering, so replies are consistent across everybody.

Consistency matters more here than in any other month, since two customers comparing answers is common at this time of year.

Answer publicly where you can

Which reduces the volume rather than speeding it up.

If six people asked the same thing, that question belongs on the site rather than in your inbox forty times.

Add it to the product page, the shipping page, or a short seasonal answers page, and the enquiries stop arriving.

Do that in the first week of December rather than the third, since the value compounds over the remaining weeks.

The paragraph is already written, so publishing it is a copy and paste.

That is much the highest-return use of the library.

Every published answer is a message you never have to send again.

Set a reply-time expectation

Which prevents the follow-up messages that double the volume again.

Say on the contact page and in the automatic acknowledgement how long a reply takes at this time of year.

We reply within one working day, currently, is enough, and it stops the second message asking whether the first arrived.

Where you cannot meet a day, say two, since a met expectation is worth more than an ambitious one.

And say when you are closed, so nobody is waiting on the twenty-sixth.

Keep the holding reply short

Which is the most used paragraph and the one written worst.

Something that says you have it, you are checking, and when you will come back, in three lines.

A holding reply that is long reads as a substitute for an answer, and one that gives no timeframe generates a chase.

Give an actual time rather than shortly, and then meet it.

Most complaints in a busy period are about silence rather than about the answer itself.

A prompt no is received better than a slow yes.

Note which questions keep arriving

Which turns six weeks of pressure into something useful for the rest of the year.

Every question asked repeatedly is a page on your site that is missing, unclear, or in the wrong place, and December surfaces them faster than any other month.

Keep a running tally beside you rather than trusting memory, since by January the specifics will have blurred into a general sense that it was busy.

In the first week of the new year, work through that list and fix the pages, which is the single most productive January task available.

Next December will be measurably quieter for having done it, and the effect compounds each year you repeat it.

The counter-case

Some enquiries deserve a real reply.

A complaint, a large order, or anything unusual should be typed properly, and reaching for a stored paragraph there is what makes a business feel automated.

A library also needs maintaining, since a paragraph quoting last year's cutoff is worse than no paragraph.

And a business receiving ten enquiries a week does not need any of this at all.

The library starts earning its hour somewhere around thirty messages a week.

Write six paragraphs before December, assemble replies from them, open every one with a line written for that person, and publish the repeated answers.

What to do

1. Write six paragraphs in one sitting.
2. Store them two seconds away.
3. Assemble, do not send whole.
4. Open with one specific line.
5. Publish the repeated ones.
6. State your reply time.
7. Check the dates in January.

Step four is the whole of what separates this from a form response, since three stored paragraphs beneath one sentence written for the person reads as a considered reply.

The automatic version is covered in the automated reply that says nothing.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.